


Popping Trees

by thecarlysutra



Series: Lakota Calendar [6]
Category: Thunderheart (1992)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-20
Updated: 2011-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-15 19:08:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/164034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecarlysutra/pseuds/thecarlysutra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SUMMARY: It was so cold that Ray shivered in his sleep.<br/>AUTHOR’S NOTES: For rarepair100 prompt #19: <i>sleepwalk</i> and Mundane Bingo prompt: <i>trying to learn a foreign language and feeling stupid because you never seem to get any better</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Popping Trees

  
The Sioux had their own calendar, but his mouth was clumsy fumbling the names of the months. He had only been on the rez a few months, and his Lakota resembled that of an infant just learning to point at things and christen them with two-syllable names. He felt foolish enough, so he didn’t ask Walter for an explanation of _Cannapopa Wi_ —Popping Trees, even though he didn’t even understand what the month meant when it was translated to English. He thought maybe it had to do with trees budding, the flowers popping up, but he hadn’t seen evidence of that; the month covered parts of January and February on the _Wasi’chu_ calendar, which were bitter cold on the rez. The trees stayed skeletal, flowerless.

It was so cold that Ray shivered in his sleep, and dreamed of falling in a frozen lake, the water so cold it cut through his flesh and down to the bone with a knife-sharp pain.

He woke to a sharp crack, and he was still shaking sleep off him as his hands, half in his dream and half in the waking world, reached for his holster, slung around the bedpost.

“Whoa, there.”

Walter’s hands on him, gentle and sure, and Ray forced his to still. He clutched the smooth leather of the holster, as familiar to him as his own hands.

“I heard a shot,” he said. His voice was waterlogged with sleep, with drowning dreams.

“Put the gun down, _kola_ ,” Walter said softly. “Ain’t nobody shooting.”

“But—”

“It’s freezing, Ray,” Walter said. “Put the gun down and get back under the covers, and I’ll explain it to you.”

Ray still felt uneasy, but dream logic was leaving him; maybe he had imagined it just like he had the frozen lake. He left the gun alone, and got back under the covers, snuggled into Walter’s embrace.

“It gets so cold sometimes that tree branches just snap and break,” Walter said. “You hear them cracking and popping. That’s all that was. Just the cold getting to some poor tree.”

Walter rubbed the palm of his hand over Ray’s goosepimpled flesh. His shivering calmed. Then Walter tipped up Ray’s face, and kissed him, and Ray felt good and truly warm.  



End file.
